The Brothers Karamazov

The defense attorney continued using every possible means, and surprised people more and more by his familiarity with the smallest details of the case. Thus, for example, the testimony of Trifon Borisovich was on its way to producing a rather strong impression, and one certainly highly unfavorable to Mitya. He calculated precisely, almost on his fingers, that during his first visit to Mokroye about a month before the catastrophe, Mitya could not have spent less than three thousand, or “maybe just a tiny bit less. Think how much he threw to the gypsy girls alone! ‘To fling kopecks down the street’—no, sir, he gave our lousy peasants twenty-five roubles at least, he wouldn’t give less than that. And how much was simply stolen from him then, sir! Whoever stole certainly didn’t sign for it; try catching a thief, when he himself was just throwing it around for nothing! Our people are robbers, they’re not worried about their souls. And the girls, our village girls, what he spent on them! People have got rich since then, that’s what, sir, and before there was just poverty.” In short, he recalled each expense and worked it all out precisely, as on an abacus. Thus the supposition that only fifteen hundred had been spent, and the rest set aside in the amulet, became unthinkable. “I myself saw it, I saw three thousand to a kopeck in his hands, contemplated it with my own eyes, who knows about money if not me, sir!” Trifon Borisovich kept exclaiming, doing his best to please “authority. “ But when the defense attorney began his cross-examination, instead of actually trying to refute the testimony, he suddenly started talking about how the coachman Timofei and another peasant named Akim, during that first spree in Mokroye a month before the arrest, had picked up a hundred roubles that Mitya had dropped on the floor in his drunken state, and turned the money over to Trifon Borisovich, for which he gave them each a rouble. “Well, and did you then return the hundred roubles to Mr. Karamazov, or not?” Trifon Borisovich tried in every way to dodge the question, but after the peasants themselves testified, he was forced to admit to the found hundred roubles, adding only that he had at once religiously returned and restored everything to Dmitri Fyodorovich “in all honesty, and that he simply wasn’t able to recall it himself, having been quite drunk at that time, sir.” But since he had nonetheless denied finding the hundred roubles before the peasant witnesses were called, his testimony about returning the money to the drunken Mitya was naturally called very much in question. And so one of the most dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution again left under suspicion and with his reputation rather besmirched. The same thing happened with the Poles: the two of them appeared looking proud and independent. They loudly testified, first, that they had both “served the Crown” and that “Pan Mitya” had offered them three thousand, to buy their honor, and they themselves had seen a great deal of money in his hands. Pan Mussyalovich introduced a terrible quantity of Polish words into his phrases, and, seeing that this only raised him in the eyes of the judge and the prosecutor, finally let his spirit soar and in the end started speaking entirely in Polish. But Fetyukovich caught them, too, in his snares: no matter how Trifon Borisovich, who was called up again, tried to hedge, he still had to confess that Pan Vrublevsky had switched the innkeeper’s deck of cards for one of his own, and that Pan Mussyalovich had cheated while keeping the bank. This was also confirmed by Kalganov when his turn came to testify, and the two pans withdrew somewhat covered in shame, even amid public laughter.

Exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovich succeeded in morally tainting each one of them and letting them go with their noses somewhat out of joint. Amateurs and lawyers were filled with admiration, and only wondered, again, what great and ultimate purpose all this could serve, for, I repeat, everyone felt that the accusation, which was growing and becoming ever more tragic, was irrefutable. But they waited, seeing by the assurance of “the great magician” that he himself was calm: “such a man” would not have come from Petersburg for nothing, nor was he such as to go back with nothing.

Chapter 3: Medical Expertise and One Pound of Nuts